[arrosenberg]

Its not “obviously” monopoly abuse by virtue of the fact that the antitrust laws have not been updated to account for modern markets and technologies. Beyond that, its not hard to distinguish between Nintendo, a company that makes consoles and video games (and has several larger competitors); and Apple, a vertically integrated empire who controls a big chunk of the global communication and entertainment markets and does not have significant competition (just cartel-style competitors).

[tinus_hn]

Apple controls slightly less than 20% of the global smartphone market and has been bypassed by Samsung in market share. It’s just ridiculous to claim they do not have significant competition, they have less than 20% while that other over 80% is all Android.

Even in their biggest market, the US, they barely pass 50% and the rest is all one very successful competitor. Pretty significant competition.

[arrosenberg]

The global smartphone market is irrelevant, since the majority of global non-Apple purchases are cheap, one-time hardware purchases with low margin and no long tail revenue. Apple absolutely dominates the market in revenue (~65%) generated on those devices (which is recurring and high margin). They control the only roads that matter, and they only have 1 real competitor in Android. That's not a competitive market by any metric I am aware of.

Additionally, they have and continue to enforce regulatory authority on their platforms, which is the role of government, not a private company. It's anticompetitive for a massive private enterprise like Apple (or Google) to arbitrarily use its' distribution platform to control the economic fortunes of the companies built on that platform.

[tinus_hn]

They have a real competitor, yet it’s not a competitive market.

Remember how Microsoft had 95% market share and how they were actively and overtly abusing that position to embrace, extend and extinguish any threats? Everyone was crying antitrust and it never went anywhere. The worst they got was the EU forcing them to put up Windows without Windows Media Player, which then got bought by nobody, and the browser choice pop-up they got rid of after a few years.

If you think anything worse is going to happen to Apple with their 20% market share, or even if you somehow inflate the number to 65%, think again. It’s not going to happen under antitrust law. If anything is going to happen it’s going to be new laws.

[arrosenberg]

> They have a real competitor, yet it’s not a competitive market.

Yes, that's completely consistent with the Brandeis view of antitrust. Cartels are not a competitive market.

> Everyone was crying antitrust and it never went anywhere.

Not facts. It resulted in a successful prosecution by the Clinton DOJ, and Microsoft was ordered to breakup in 2000. The company appealed (dragging past the election) and it was settled by the Bush DOJ, which obviously resulted in weaker policies since the Bush lawyers subscribed to the Borkist view of antitrust.

> If you think anything worse is going to happen to Apple with their 20% market share, or even if you somehow inflate the number to 65%, think again. It’s not going to happen under antitrust law. If anything is going to happen it’s going to be new laws.

Guess we will see. Seems to already be happening based on the defensive moves these companies are making in response to more aggressive regulators, but I agree new laws would help move things along. I didn't "somehow" inflate it. I looked at the recurring revenue streams from the app store instead of device sales, because app store revenue is a massive stream of profit, and devices are low-margin commodities.